Blame the Internet: London’s burglars won’t even steal CDs, DVDs

Pity the poor plastic disk—London's burglars won't even grab them anymore. It's not hard to see why. Imagine yourself in black mask and gloves, creeping through the darkened Grosvenor Square residence of Lady Fincherton-Smythe, trying to decide what to stuff into your sack.

You see a huge pile of CDs and DVDs—recent, chart-topping hits that belong to Lady Fincherton-Smythe's wastrel son, Nigel "Pikey" Fincherton-Smythe—the sort of thing that might have brought in quite a few quid in the mid-90s. You hesitate; surely some of the lads round the pub wouldn't mind a discounted version of that Dr. Who DVD box set?

But then you remember that the sort of lads who don't ask too many questions about the goods you proffer are the sort of lads who now get their Dr. Who fix from the Internet's darker back alleys. Everyone else seems to use iTunes or Amazon's LoveFilm or the online TV "catch-up" services from the BBC and others. Stolen digital media on little plastic discs just doesn't have the same commercial potential it once did. You pass by the discs and instead pick up Pikey's aging Windows laptop and an iPod loaded with a horrifying array of Europop. Now these could still bring in a a bit of dosh. You sneak back into London's foggy streets.

“Years ago, you’d see a man in a pub selling CDs,” says Eric Phelps, a detective in London’s Metropolitan Police. “Not any more.” Indeed, thefts of entertainment products like CDs and DVDs have collapsed in England and Wales, to the point that they are now taken in just 7 percent of all burglaries in which something is stolen. They are now targeted no more frequently than are toiletries and cigarettes.